Sweeping the Clouds Away

Posted on September 15, 2010 by fsdthreshold

Once again, Mr. Brown Snowflake has provided us with a guest column! With gratitude to him, and for our enjoyment, here it is. It originally ran on the Editorial pages of the Perry Chief on November 6, 2009.

Forty Years of Sunny Days on Sesame Street

One of the greatest gifts ever given to the children of America will be celebrating a birthday Tuesday.

A little experiment that was years in the making originally aired on New York Public Television on Nov. 10, 1969, sprightly singing “Sunny day/Sweepin’ the clouds away/On my way to where the air is sweet/Can you tell me how to get/How to get to Sesame Street?”
For four decades the geniuses at the Children’s Television Workshop (created to maintain artistic, non-commercial control over their productions) have taught untold millions their ABC’s and basic numbers, encouraged multi-ethnic friendships, offered assurance in times of trouble and provided a wholesome, safe haven where every day is a “sunny day.”
The seed that became Sesame Street first took serious root when driving force Joan Cooney first met Lloyd Morrisett of the Carnegie Corporation. Morrisett happened to notice one day in 1965 that his three-year old daughter, Sarah, happily sang back commercial jingles from television.

Cooney, who had spent years working with Bob Keeshan on Captain Kangaroo took it from there (to cut it quite short) and Sesame Street was on its way.

It so happens that, born in the summer of 1966, I was the perfect age — the exact beginning audience — when Sesame Street survived its first season (the show was trashed by a majority of critics, though the educational establishment was largely ecstatic).

WILL-TV 12, the PBS affiliate operated by the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, was one of the first midwestern PBS stations to latch on. I do not recall whether it was mom, dad, the baby-sitter or fate, but something plunked little Jeffrey down in front of the big Zenith one day and, well, he was hooked.

At 43 I still am, though I must confess to not having much tolerance for Elmo.
Jim Henson’s genius, was, of course, hugely instrumental in the success of the program and the Muppets remain so today. Henson never wanted his creations tied to Sesame Street, and went on to launch The Muppet Show in the late 70’s.  Naturally, I have that entire series — aimed very much at an adult audience — on DVD. You should, too.
The casting of Sesame Street has usually been perfect, too. Luis, Maria, Bob, Susan and Gordon, Mr. Hooper . . . all have been some of the more enduring characters ever created and several of the original cast are still there, helping Big Bird overcome various anxieties and still hoping to convert Oscar into a lovable lug.

That Oscar — irascible, bitter and negative — would immediately be a hit with children was one of the biggest surprises to early critics of the show. His inclusion, at Henson’s insistence, was a source of intense conflict in the early stages that ended up a gem, a pattern that has often been repeated (the baker who falls down a flight of steps while carrying a tray of various numbered items and the Snuffaluffagus are two other examples).

Anyone who spent a portion of their childhood watching Sesame Street is likely able to sing at least a considerable portion of at least a dozen of Joe Raposo’s brilliant musical creations. All someone needs to do is hum a bar of “The People That You Meet” or “Sing” or “Rubber Duckie” or “I Have Five” in a group of similar-aged adults and the fun begins all over again.

I still shed tears of laughter at the Yip-Yips looking in the Earth Book to figure out how to talk to a telephone or a grandfather clock. The manic energy of Cookie Monster is an undying hit, too, and who can forget looking skyward with Bob and Big Bird and some neighborhood children as Alphabet Bates uses his plane to spell a capital letter in the sky?

There is a wonderful kaleidoscope of programming on television for children now, but almost none of it would be there if we had not been asked for directions to Sesame Street.

While the idea may seem simple — puppets and people interact and sing songs to educate kids — take a moment to ponder what it must have been like to start from scratch, with no money and little support beyond encouragement from friends.

Sesame Street spent the better part of three years in labor, and it was not at all certain to live to be a toddler. Now CTW’s gem is 40 and shines as brightly as ever.

Sunny day, sweepin’ the clouds away. . . .

Much of the information in this column is courtesy of Michael Davis’ magnificent 2008 book Street Gang: The Origins of Sesame Street. It is a detailed trip through the early years  to the current day and comes with my highest recommendation. — JW.

Neighborhood Sports

Posted on August 21, 2010 by fsdthreshold

For this entry, we have a guest columnist. This is a new feature of the blog that I hope to include from time to time. We have a fascinating, richly-diverse (if not “rich”) group of readers — people in far-flung places with all sorts of experiences and insights. The next logical step in making this truly “our” blog is to let some of you take the podium now and then. It’s strictly on a volunteer basis — no one is required to “take a turn” or anything — but I hope the wheels are turning in the minds of some of you. If you have an idea, you can let me know; or if I have an idea, I may contact you with a plea to write us a piece. That was the case for this entry: once I’d read the article, I asked its author if we could use it, and he graciously agreed.

The following column was written by the sports editor of The Perry Chief in Perry, Iowa. The author also serves as an AP beat writer for Iowa State University football, and occasionally, ISU women’s basketball. You know him as Mr. Brown Snowflake, whose real identity remains hidden to protect the innocent.

This column first appeared in the April 23, 2007 edition of The Perry Chief. On February 5, 2008, it was awarded second place for “Best Sports Column” by the Iowa Newspaper Federation from among 76 entries statewide.

Without further adieu, then, here is the work of our first-ever guest columnist:

FROM THE PRESS BOX: Neighborhood Sports

You wouldn’t know it by looking at me now, but time was the author spent hour upon hour playing sports. Either my parents planned exceptionally well or else the dice came up in my favor, as kids that were my own age or near to it were abundant in the neighborhood where I grew up. A bike ride of just a few blocks uncovered several other guys in my age group.

The result was a youth spent playing whiffleball, kickball, basketball,
football, maulball (often referred to, in those innocent days of the mid-70s to early 80s, as “smear the queer”) or any other variety of sports. An occasional game of “kick-the-can” or “bloody murder” might spring up, and if you could round up enough people (10 per side being the oft-desired but rarely achieved goal) a block-wide “capture the flag” might be undertaken.

Two-block long and lightly travelled Cottage Street served as a one-time home to kickball games, with Mr. Manual’s (correct spelling) pristine front yard an automatic out if the ball stopped in it. Of course, the older Mahan and Wilson girls always seemed to do just that,
and Mr. Manual would come out, chew us out and fetch the ball (we weren’t allowed on his little homestead, naturally).

The neighbor across the street from Manual (and next to my buddy Doug’s first house in the area) was, at the time, a certain Mr. Williams, a huge Oakland A’s fan who used to set up a cardtable with little paper cups and a cold jug of Kool-Aid for us.

When we outgrew Cottage Street we switched to Elm for whiffleball, with two shingles intentionally left to melt into the asphalt (where they remained for years) serving as home plate and second base. An old white oak served as first base, with a broken section of curb making a perfect third. And, as all could easily recognize, over the power lines was an automatic home run while launching one into Nelsons’ pool meant that not only were you out, but that you had to get the long-handled scoop to retrieve the ball.

We would wrap layers of black electrical tape around the thin yellow plastic bats and would also tape the ball (leaving the holes open, of course). The need for a catcher would often result in “ghost-runners” and “pitcher’s hand” was the standard order of the day.

On occasion the games would switch to the yard between Martins’ and
Eichelbergers’, but that was fairly rare, as were maulball games in my
backyard, because of the stone birdbath that, miraculously, no one ever collided with. Prized beyond all others was the 20×15 foot cement slab (complete with a circular built-in drain along one side) and 10-ft basket built by the one-time owners across from our backyard, the Ganeys. Mick had played high-school ball with Michigan and Iowa State coaching legend Johnny Orr and had put the court in for his kids, but as the years passed it really belonged to the neighborhood.

Long after the Ganeys had moved to Georgia the court still carried their name, despite the home changing hands two or three times. We used to shovel off the snow, squeegee the court dry, and play hoops in three layers of clothing in all but the worst of winter weather. A great 3-on-3 court and one that, even into high school, friends would drive across town to play pick-up games on. Thankfully the series of new owners never minded, and would sometimes turn on the floodlights for us.

Adolescence meant driver’s licenses and that meant a travelling circus. We even busted into the light box at the softball complex behind the high school and would turn them on and play ball until midnight. I guess the police figured — similar to when we did the same thing for full court hoops at Manners Park — that as long as we were in sight and sober we were not burning down the town, so they left us alone, though they would sometimes chase us off if we were too loud.

I think back to those times with Doug, Dan, Joe, Skybob, Iron Fran, Bill,
Fygar, Crewser, Bernandini and all the others and wonder where the days went. I know the answer, but looking around today I worry this generation won’t have such memories. I belong to what has been named “Generation X” or the “13th Gen.” Those of us born just after the Boomers (1966 in my case) and in the short years afterwards grew up just before the explosion of cable TV, video games and computers. My high school had three computers, the total power of which was significantly less than a Playstation.

For fun we played ball. Played catch, shot hoops. Spit chew and B.S.’d each other while punting a football. Yelled “Car!” and waited for the next pitch.

I cannot recall the last time I saw a similar sight. Two years ago in
Marshalltown I spent two hours on a beautiful sunny Saturday just driving around looking for something of the sort. Not a whiff. I have already done the same in Perry, with the same results.

Mr. Williams’ Kool-Aid would just sit there today.

Back to Fred: And there we have it! Many, many thanks to Mr. Brown Snowflake! This essay is particularly interesting to me because I was a country kid with only two others in the neighborhood, which pretty much precluded team sports.

Long ago on this blog we all told stories about places we played as kids. The discussion this time will certainly overlap with that, but we can also focus, as this column does, on the things we did there — the games, the activities, the building of treehouses, the lining-up of dinosaurs or army men (or both). . . .

Stories, anyone?

Cthulhu’s Reign: Talking with John R. Fultz

Posted on August 14, 2010 by fsdthreshold

This April saw the release of a new book certain to delight fans of H.P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu Mythos stories. Edited by Darrell Schweitzer and published by DAW Books, Inc., the anthology is called Cthulhu’s Reign and includes stories by Ian Watson, Don Webb, Mike Allen, Ken Asamatsu, Will Murray, Matt Cardin, Darrell Schweitzer, John R. Fultz, John Langan, Jay Lake, Gregory Frost, Brian Stableford, Laird Barron, Richard A. Lupoff, and Fred Chappell. Cthulhu Mythos stories as Lovecraft wrote them (though he never used the term “Cthulhu Mythos”) foreshadow a time when the Great Old Ones — unspeakably monstrous beings that descended from the stars in a primordial age and are now sleeping in the deep places of the Earth and beneath the sea — will awaken, arise, and make the world their own. In Lovecraft’s tales, we catch glimpses of the cosmic horror in secretive cults, isolated New England towns (redolent with rotting gambrel roofs and moldering crypts), ancient dusty tomes, and strange human-monster hybrids who are the firstfruits of horrors to come.

Lovecraft’s stories look ahead to this time “when the stars are right” and “the Earth will be wiped clean.” For the most part, very few of the multitude of writers who have added to the Mythos in the years since Lovecraft have tackled the question of what the world will be like after sunken R’lyeh rises from ocean depths and Cthulhu begins his squamous reign. (A noteworthy exception is Neil Gaiman’s story “A Study in Emerald” in his collection Fragile Things, which presents a most unique take on Sherlock Holmes and the royal families of the world.)

This anthology steps into the breach. As its title suggests, the stories take us to a world in which Cthulhu is no longer sleeping.

One of the writers, John R. Fultz, graciously agreed to answer my interview questions here. (You may recall that he chatted with us on this blog in November of last year, in the post called “Pen and Sorcery: An Interview with John R. Fultz.”)

My apologies for some slight redundancies: I sent John all the questions first, and in a few cases his earlier answers partially address later questions. I didn’t want to alter what he actually said, so everything is presented here in full. (Just so you know the instances of repetition are not a case of my not listening!)

1. First of all, the table of contents of this anthology reads like a hall of fame. Every writer here is a recognizable name in the industry; many of them have been hugely successful and have produced award-winning fiction for years. How did you feel when Darrell Schweitzer asked you to contribute a tale?

 
I was totally honored by the chance to be in this book. Darrell mentioned it and wasn’t sure if he had any more room for additional stories, so I wrote one that wasn’t terribly long. It was the story itself that drew his final “Yes.” If I had written something he didn’t feel was good enough for the book, I know he would have told me. So I was elated when he accepted “This Is How the World Ends.” This is such a great anthology, I’m really proud of it.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

2. Most of your previous work has been fantasy, not horror. How far back does your interest in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu stories go? [I was drawn to the books in about 5th or 6th grade by the delightfully horrendous covers on the paperbacks in our family’s bookstore.] Can you remember how you first encountered them and what your reaction was?
 

 

I don’t recall reading my first Lovecraft tale, but I believe the first HPL book I ever read was THE DOOM THAT CAME TO SARNATH AND OTHER STORIES. Followed by THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH. I’m talking about the Del Rey Lovecraft series with the amazing Michael Whelan covers (see attached images). I’m not sure exactly which one came first, but a friend of mine in high school was reading these and recommended them. It was the exquisitely creepy cover art that got my interest. And when I read stories such as “The Doom that Came to Sarnath,” “The Other Gods,” “Polaris,” “Ex Oblivione,” and the beautiful “Quest of Iranon,” I became an instant fan. They were fantasies unlike anything else I had experienced at the time: lyrical, poetic, full of brilliant images and mythic grandeur, with a current of subtle horror reminiscent of the best dreams and nightmares.
 
That’s when I started looking for anything by Lovecraft…and that lead me to THE DREAM-QUEST collection. “The Dream-Quest of Uknown Kadath” absolutely blew my mind, and that book also featured the magnificent stories “Celephais,” “The White Ship,” “The Silver Key,” and the stunning “Through the Gates of the Silver Key.” Lovecraft’s cycle of “Dunsanian” or “Dreamlands” stories remain my favorites of all his works. Some purists decry that part of his body of work as less exceptional than his more “pure” horror…but I disagree. Another terrific thing about these stories is that they led me to the spectacular fantasy work of Lord Dunsany, who was one of Lovecraft’s literary heroes (and with good reason). Some see these tales as Lovecraft simply “trying to be Dunsany,” but I see them as a vital part of Lovecraft’s output…and even though they are fantasy they are laced with the elements of cosmic horror that infuse the rest of his work.
 
So my HPL fanhood began with these two books, but led me to the other books in the series, all bearing gorgeous Michael Whelan covers: THE TOMB AND OTHER TALES and AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS AND OTHER TALES OF TERROR. Finally, during my first year of college (’87-’88) I discovered August Derleth’s THE TRAIL OF CTHULHU, which entertained me to no end. It was a perfect blend of pulp adventure and Lovecraft fiction. I remember really enjoying this story of Professor Laban Shrewsbury and his colleagues seeking out the Black Island where Cthulhu was soon to rise. Still, when it comes to Lovecraft, nothing beats the stories in those first two collections for me…although “At the Mountains of Madness” is also a favorite.
[Fred here: “The Quest of Iranon” was a big influence on my story “The Place of Roots” (Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 2001). I was also enchanted with Lord Dunsany as a teenager. But I must confess I have never really delved into Lovecraft’s “Dunsanian” or “Dreamlands” stories. I think I’ve read pretty much everything else of his, and my favorites are the “witchy” New England stories, with the secret attic rooms, the impossible angles, the swamps full of croaking frogs, and the people that are not quite people. I love how, rare as the forbidden Necronomicon is, copies seem to turn up everywhere, just when some innocent character is enjoying too much sanity. Oh — and for me, the Michael Whelan covers are beautiful, but they represent the Lovecraft of my twenties and thirties. The Lovecraft I devoured in my childhood had the Great Old covers — the incomparable Gervasio Gallardo and some other artists whose names I never knew. I wish I had those books here so I could scan the covers and offer glimpses!]
 
 3. Reading “This Is How the World Ends,” I was deeply impressed that you were able to tell a story in a contemporary voice, a modern setting, that also felt quite true to Lovecraft’s intentions and sensibilities. Did your editor give you any specific guidelines concerning what your tale should or should not be?
 
No, Darrell simply told me the “hook” of the anthology, i.e. that it involved stories set after Cthulhu and the Old Ones rose up to reclaim the earth (or “wipe it clean” as the case may be). From there I was free to pursue my own Lovecraftian muse. Darrell is one of fantasy’s Truly Great Editors, and that’s what truly great editors do — they get out of the way and let writers write. I decided to go in a very survivalist, post-apocalyptian vein. I didn’t want the typical scholars trudging through libraries or detectives tracking cultists. I wanted to see how an “Average Joe” would survive when these preposterous space-gods started crushing humanity into pulp. My initial thought was “Sort of like TERMINATOR with giant monsters instead of robots…”
[Fred here: It’s excellent that your character was meant to be an “Average Joe,” and his name actually is “Joe”!]
 
 4. And in a related question: was there some back-and-forth between you and the editor as you revised your story? Did he ask for changes, or did he pretty much trust you all to produce polished stories on your own?
 
Darrell handled all his editing on a case-by-case basis. I had no knowledge of his process with other writers. But most of them were people he invited to participate, so knowing Darrell I’m pretty sure he didn’t mess with their writing processes very much. Again, the sign of a terrific editor. In the case of my finished story, he didn’t ask for a single change as far as I remember. Of course, he’s been a fiction mentor for me for many, many years, so over the course of our friendship he’s taught me how to write the best possible story I can. We’ve known each other for over twenty years, although we didn’t meet face-to-face until a few years ago at the 2006 WorldCon (where he actually introduced me to Harlan Ellison!…I was dumbstruck.).
 
5. When you set out to write this story, were there any particular aspects of Lovecraft’s vision and style that you wanted to maintain or perhaps explore further? Was there a specific quote or passage that you kept before you as a guide? And, without giving away your plot, is there a dimension to the vision that you added, that is uniquely your own? What is the John Fultzness of this story?
 
Ha! “Fultzness”…I love that, Fred. Let’s see…the aspect that I wanted to explore was the sheer monstrosity of HPL’s creations…I wanted to dive deep into “monster tale” territory and let the blood and slime fly. In this I was probably inspired by Mike Mignola’s terrific HELLBOY and B.P.R.D. comics — which are very Lovecraftian and visually brilliant. Many of the other authors went into the depths of sheer “strangeness”…exploring the metaphysical, cosmic, and spiritual side of Cthulhu’s Reign…but I chose to take a more direct route to horror. This was a conscious choice…I wanted it to feel almost like a western. I did do some research about what HPL said would actually happen when the Old Ones returned and took back the planet, then I let my imagination run wild. If I added anything that is uniquely my own, it might be that I filtered my twelve years as a Californian into the story. I wanted to write a “West Coast Cthulhu Apocalypse Western Survivalist Horror Tale.” I guess I did that. If I did it all over, I might go in a more metaphysical or cosmic direction…but I still like the way this story flies in the face of all that phantasmal stuff by staying “down to earth” until the final scene.
[Fred here: That’s fascinating! Lovecraft’s stories are mainly focused on the East, on New England. You took things out West, and yes, as I read the story, I noticed how Californian it is. I was thinking, “I’ll bet he’s actually been to all these places.”]
 
 6. Lovecraft wrote his stories in the 1920s-’30s. Since that time, generations of writers have produced an uncountable number of Cthulhu Mythos tales, some faithful to Lovecraft’s vision, some horrendously not so. If one adds in the fiction more generally influenced by the originals, the number of Lovecraft-inspired stories increases exponentially. There are Lovecraft scholars who have written dissertations on him; there are lifelong fans who know every detail of his stories — and you knew such people would read this anthology. Given all that, was it daunting to write a Cthulhu Mythos story? Did it come easily? How did you set about the task?
 
Actually, it did come rather easily because I didn’t really think of it as a “Cthulhu Mythos” story…I thought of it more as a Survivalist Horror story with Western elements…and of course, Lovecraft elements. This is one reason I wanted a protagonist who was as far removed from the Cthulhu Mythos as possible…not a professor, or occultist, or other typical Lovecraftian character. Just an average, everyday American (albeit, a war vet), who has to deal with a World Gone Mad. Once I had a firm handle on my character, Joe, the story began to write itself. The driving theme was SURVIVAL. That is Joe’s goal throughout the entire story…how do you survive in a world that is essentially un-survivable? This story is the answer to that question.
 
7. Your protagonist is a military veteran, a man who has known loss and disillusionment, but he’s a determined survivor. (He’s quite different from the typical protagonists Lovecraft chose!) Was that a conscious deliberation on your part, or did that character just come to you whole cloth from the beginning?
 
Yes, very conscious choice, as I described above. Since I wanted to explore the concept of SURVIVAL, I needed a protagonist who literally knew how to survive. Those brave men and women who go fight their countries’ battles know all about surviving in a world gone to hell. So a vet seemed a natural choice for the soft-spoken “badass” that I needed for this story. Joe was inspired to a large degree by some of the farmers I encountered in the San Joaquin Valley (central California’s “salad bowl”), which ironically reminded me of the farmers I had known back in my native state Kentucky. Farmers are tough folk…a farmer who is also a veteran…that is someone who will survive. Remember that old Hank Williams Jr. song “A Country Boy Can Survive”? That could actually be the theme song of this story. I’ll remember that when it’s optioned as a movie. 🙂
[Fred here: Your Joe is certainly no pale young man given to bouts of melancholy and inclined to sit up far into the night poring over eldritch texts.]
 
8. Somewhat related (and this is more of an observation than a question): in Lovecraft’s tales, the conflict is almost never physical. It’s a battle against gradually-awakening, often unwanted awareness. The character goes to an unfamiliar place, uncovers information (willingly or unwillingly), and the knowledge comes at a terrible cost. In your story, there’s no “uncovering of forbidden knowledge” to be done. There’s no need for a copy of the Necronomicon. The Old Ones are back, and their presence is unmissable. The conflict becomes, at least on the surface, very physical. (Your story doesn’t stop at the surface, though.) Any thoughts on this? (Again, I haven’t given you a question to answer . . . so you’re entitled to say “Yes, Chris Farley, I remember that. Yes, I liked it.”)
 
Chris Farley reference! Nice…
 
Your observation is spot-on. I wanted to write a story that would defy all that “forbidden knowledge” and “esoteric mysteries” rigamarole and take a more direct route. I mean, after all, this is a world where A GIANT SQUID-GOD FROM SPACE HAS RISEN FROM THE OCEAN AND CONQUERED THE WORLD! There aren’t many mysteries left at this point! When terrors lurk in the shadows and awful secrets are learned from ancient tomes, you are in Lovecraft territory…but in this anthology all bets are off. CTHULHU has won. It doesn’t matter what you do…what you know…you’re in the same boat as every other shlub. So even though some of the other stories in CR really boggled my mind, I’m glad my story was more of a knuckle sandwich than a terrifying thought.
 
9. Your editor, Darrell Schweitzer, is a living treasure of our genre(s) [fantasy and horror]. He coedited Weird Tales for years and won a World Fantasy Award for it. He’s written and edited a very long shelf-load of amazing books and given us “about three hundred short stories, hundreds of essays, reviews, and poems” (I’m quoting from the bio notes). He even writes Cthulhu limericks and will recite them if provoked. For all this, in my firsthand experience, he’s always willing to talk to “the little guy,” to encourage the relatively unknown writer. What was it like working with him?
 
I love Darrell. He is an unsung genius. I don’t say this because he’s a friend of mine. I knew it before I ever met him. Back in ’89 when I picked up a copy of WEIRD TALES and read his story “The Mysteries of the Faceless King” I became an instant fan. I set out searching for any stories of his I could find. Every one of his story collections is full of timeless, glimmering prose jewels. Like Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard, he’s also an amazing poet…which is probably why his prose is so lyrical and engaging. I consider him one of the Greatest Living Fantasy Writers, although he gets more attention for his critical/essayist/editor role. Anyone who takes the time to explore his back catalog of story collections and read MASK OF THE SORCERER will see what I’m talking about. He’s an author that EVERY fantasy fan should be reading.
 
As you mentioned, in addition to being a literary genius, Darrell is also one of the nicest guys you could ever meet. His sense of humor is staggering…he may be the biggest Three Stooges fan I ever met. And he really knows how to give writing advice that works. I started sending story submissions to WEIRD TALES many years before I was ready to be published…I was a sophomore at the University of Kentucky, writing fantasy tales in my Creative Writing class and sending them to WT. Darrell always gave me the greatest responses and told me how to improve my writing, unlike most other rejections I got early in life, which were basically just form letters. Darrell was extremely encouraging to me as a young writer…which meant a lot to me because he was already one of my favorite writers. And still is. I knew that, someday, if I could only write a story that was good enough for Darrell Schweitzer, I could call myself a Writer. That day finally came in early 2004 when he accepted my story “The Persecution of Artifice the Quill” for WEIRD TALES. It appeared in WT #340. Until that time I had only really been published in small-press mags.
[Fred here: About Darrell’s sense of humor: I remember talking with him at a very late hour at a World Fantasy Con, and from his pocket he pulled a collection of rare, ancient coins and explained that he was a “dealer in bargain-rate antiquities.”]
 
10. I don’t think there are many who would dispute the claim (I’m quoting Mr. Schweitzer here, in his introduction) that “Lovecraft (1890-1937) was the greatest writer of weird and horrific fiction in English in the 20th century.” Why do you think Lovecraft’s impact has been so enormous? What is his appeal? Why do you think he’s still being read, when so many writers from the pulp era have become historical footnotes?
 
Who can say why an author truly achieves immortality? It might be the sheer quality of his work. It might be the cult-like devotion of his fans and readers (and all their work to preserve his legacy). I do think the appeal of Lovecraft’s fiction is a universal one…fear being the oldest emotion…and the power of his writing is so great that it rises above outdated diction, verbiage, and style. Just like the work of Edgar Allen Poe does. It’s the STORIES that are so good, we don’t mind the “old-fashioned” style in which they are told. With Lovecraft, as with many other fantasy/horror authors, that antiquated style is actually part of the charm. I also think his appeal lies in how he merged fantasy and horror in unique and expansive ways that opened new doors for other writers. Howard and Smith were so inspired by HPL’s stories, they started writing tales set in his universe! That tells you something right there.
 
11. Although your story is gruesome and horrific (as a Cthulhu story ought to be), your language often reads like poetry — descriptive, vivid, and understated, leaving much to the reader’s imagination. To quote: “. . . something big as the moon crawled out of the ocean.” It amazes me that a mere half-sentence can be at once beautiful and terrifying. And this part: “A single day and all the major cities . . . gone.” I couldn’t help hearing an echo of Plato’s description of how Atlantis was destroyed in “a single day and night of misfortune.” Do you have any thoughts about the relationship of poetry to tales of the strange and terrible?
 
Oh, definitely. Most of my favorite writers (especially fantasy and horror writers) were also poets. Poetry is the bare distillation of words…the sheer essence of words themselves…it requires a mastery of imagery and word choice. Every word matters MORE because there are so few of them. Even a long poem has waaay less words than a short story. Poetry cuts right to the heart of what makes fantasy and horror work: effective imagery and the joy of language. I never considered myself a poet…but I try to achieve a lyrical quality in my prose. The fact that I wrote songs for many, many years does help, songs and poetry being closely related. But I think it’s more a matter of being aware of metaphor, simile, and figurative language. Using those well is far more effective than throwing in a bunch of adjectives. It’s all about creating images in your reader’s mind by appealing to the five senses…as well as the spiritual sensations. Robert E. Howard was a terrific poet, and Clark Ashton Smith (despite his tremendous verbosity) was as well. Their stories sing with lyrical imagery that brings their fantasies to life. So there is definitely a link between prose and poetry, especially in the realm of weird/fantastic fiction.
[Fred here: This reminds me that John has also written a series of excellent articles on the craft of writing fantasy. His blog is in my blogroll over there at the right. Click on that, and you’ll get to his blog; from there, I think you can find links to the Black Gate website where his articles are.]
 
12. Do you have a favorite among Lovecraft’s stories? [I would be hard pressed to choose just one, though I think I could single out four or five. Is that an oxymoron, “singling” out “four or five”?]
 
That is tough. I think I would have to choose “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.” It’s sort of the crown jewel of his “Dunsanian/Dreamlands” stories…which are my favorite HPL tales.
[Fred here: For atmosphere, I love “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” “The Dunwich Horror,” and “The Dreams in the Witch-House.” I believe “The Strange High House in the Mist” completely supersedes genre and should be included in the English lit survey texts used in colleges and universities. My #1 favorite HPL story just might be “The Shunned House,” because in a way it encapsulates the cosmic horror of Lovecraft much as John 3:16 encapsulates the Gospel.]
 
13. Finally, what’s next for John R. Fultz? What’s out, what’s coming out, and can you give any hints about what you’re working on? I believe your epic fantasy graphic novel Primordia is due for release in a complete, remastered, beautiful edition very soon. Would you care to tell readers why they should rush out and get it, and where to do so?
 
The PRIMORDIA graphic novel is a “stone-age faerie tale” written by me, beautifully drawn by Roel Wielinga, colored by Joel Chua, and published by Archaia Comics. It is truly a feast for the eyes, and anyone who likes epic fantasy will dig the story. It combines everything I’ve ever loved about fantasy in the comics medium…and the hardcover includes a new short story from me called “The Tale of the Dawn Child,” as well as a lot of other extras.
 
I have a really cool wizard story called “The Thirteen Texts of Arthyria” coming up in THE WAY OF THE WIZARD, an anthology coming in November from Prime Books. This one will be packed with “big-name” fantasy writers like Neil Gaiman and George R.R. Martin, to name a couple.
 
My story “The Vintages of Dream” should be appearing in the very next issue of BLACK GATE, and I have a new tale called “The Gnomes of Carrick County” slated for an upcoming issue of SPACE AND TIME.
[Quick interruption from Fred: My story “World’s End” should be in that very same issue of Black Gate, so everyone: that’s the issue to get, this fall, BG #15!]
 
This October LIGHTSPEED, the new online science-fiction magazine from John Joseph Adams, will be featuring my sci-fi/horror story “The Taste of Starlight.” It is the most disturbing and horrific thing I’ve ever written…just in time for Halloween. Can’t wait!
 
I’m currently working on a novel that blends high fantasy with Native American adventure fiction to create something that is neither. Tentative title: THE LIFE AND DREAMS OF TALL EAGLE.
 
John, thank you so much for your time and for agreeing to do this interview!
 
Thanks, Fred!
This is Fred again: for those of you who are wondering how to pronounce “Cthulhu”: I remember reading Lovecraft’s specific explanation. It must have been in one of his letters, though I don’t remember which one or to whom. He explained that it was meant to be a representation of a name produced by a physical speech mechanism not even remotely human. It’s a use of our alphabet to approximate an utterly alien utteration. That being said, Lovecraft pronounced it by saying “Kluh-loo,” two syllables, with the first being extremely guttural. Just pretend you’re a colossal squid from space, and say what feels natural.
There is also a Lovecraft-based movie that those who appreciate his fiction should know about. In 2005, the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society released a labor of love . . . and craft, heh, heh (25 cents to the Pun Fund) . . . called The Call of Cthulhu, a film version of his story by that title, which is one of the three key stories for understanding the Cthulhu Mythos (the other two being The Dunwich Horror and The Shadow Over Innsmouth). What sets this movie apart and makes it rise (like sunken R’lyeh) over the morass of mostly poor attempts to bring Lovecraft tales to the screen is that the filmmakers took great pains to create a movie that might have been made in Lovecraft’s day. It’s silent and black-and-white, very carefully made to look like a vintage relic of the early thirties — yet behind the grainy, authentically-primitive presentation are state-of-the-art techniques. A bunch of people worked really hard, knowing what moviemakers know now, to produce a stark, haunting 47-minute movie that looks for all the world like it was made then. And this, I truly believe, is the way to bring Lovecraft’s Mythos to a visual medium. This is the HPL Historical Society, so they’re sensitive to what his stories are supposed to feel like, what is important about them, and what oughtn’t to be sacrificed. There are abundant special features in full color, which are every bit as much fun as the movie itself. I am a discriminating buyer of DVDs: I try to buy only ones that I’m pretty sure I’ll watch again and again. And I consider this one to be a good investment.
By the way, you’ve gotta love the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s motto: Ludo Fore Putavimus. They claim that’s Latin for “We Thought It Would Be Fun.”

Midsummer Rambles

Posted on August 10, 2010 by fsdthreshold

I’m nearly done figuring student grades, and my summer vacation officially begins tomorrow — so very soon, I should be able to give my full attention to the novel-in-progress! The weather couldn’t be better: blue skies, sweltering heat, brilliant sunshine, green leaves, and the blue shade beneath trees offering portals into other worlds. It’s hot here — finally hot enough to satisfy me. (I have to enjoy it to the full, to make up for the 499,999 Niigatans who are complaining about it. Golly, don’t these people know about H.P. Lovecraft? That’s how you deal with heat: read H.P. Lovecraft. Or any good story!) For me, heat is one of the greatest incubators for the imagination. Everything seems to go better when it’s hot. Pens write better, because the ink inside them is all liquid and warm. I plant my flag here: I claim this season! “I sound my barbaric YAWP over the rooftops of the world!”

So anyway, I think I’m going to address two unrelated topics in this post. That’s the plan, anyway — let’s see how it goes.

First, here’s something that might be of interest to readers and writers, and it might spark some good discussion. (Recently Chris, another friend, and I were talking about print-on-demand technology and why it’s economical and may be the future of paper publishing.) Anyway, this is my recent experience:

At the last World Fantasy Convention, I attended a panel about often-overlooked, not-widely-known older works of fantasy that are well worth looking up. (It was one of the best panels last year, though there were many extremely good ones.) One panelist brought up The Garden at 19, by Edgar Jepson, written in 1910, a book that is “very chilling, with chilling illustrations” and is about Pan-worshipers. Since I had just read Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan, my ears perked up, and like a shameless fanboy, I approached the panelist in the hallway afterward to make sure I had the particulars right. He was a spry little old collector/purveyor of rare treasures of the genre, very gracious and helpful, and obviously delighted to talk about good books.

So I made a note of The Garden at 19, putting it on my wish list to track down someday. Well, recently I had occasion to order some books from Amazon. (I needed a couple things for research on my current novel, but that’s a whole ‘nother topic! Is it not cool of me to do research for what I’m writing? I’m like the Scooby gang!) Before I went to the checkout, I typed in The Garden at 19, and I found two very different offerings: a really expensive collector’s edition, and a strange, generic edition for $19.66. Since I was buying and hadn’t gone on a book-buying spree for awhile, I decided to splurge on that one. [Paying 2,000 yen for a book doesn’t seem nearly as expensive as shelling out twenty bucks. . . . I wonder what the psychology behind that is? Does the money in our “second countries” seem less real to us, or is it something inherent in the nature of yen? I think that might be it: instead of a dollar bill, you have a 100-yen coin, which you treat and spend about like a quarter. You don’t get into paper money until the 1,000-yen bill, which is worth very roughly $10. I think that’s the reason. If a hundred yen were a bill, not a coin, it would feel like a larger sum of money. But I’m the last person who should be talking about economics.]

So . . . into my mailbox comes my shipment of books from Amazon. The copy of The Garden at 19 was . . . very interesting. It represents a phenomenon of the present age that didn’t exist even a decade or two ago. This book has been produced by optical scanning — using OCR software to scan a rare, original copy of Jepson’s book. The edition I bought comes with a disclaimer/apology inside the front cover: the publishers apologize for typos, because they employ no proofreaders. Proofreaders would drive up the cost, and most of the books they offer for sale sell only a few copies.

I did some looking around on their website (www.general-books.net). They use robots to turn and scan the pages of old, rare books. No human is there to look over the robots’ shoulders. The books may be tattered, smudged, dog-eared, marked-up copies from personal collections, from libraries, gleaned from auctions, etc. The scanner does its best to see through the wrinkles, graffiti, and dirt. But scanning is still an imprecise science.

I’ve encountered some interesting mistakes made by scanners. One friend let me read a manuscript in which the scanner had interpreted “King” as “Icing”! See how that could happen? Also, the scanner repeatedly read “fairy dell” as “fairy deli”! Wow! I wonder what foods are sold at a fairy deli? Lembas? Probably you shouldn’t eat anything from a fairy deli, or you may sleep for a hundred years.

The company, General Books LLC, reformats the book to make it look nice. There are no interior or cover illustrations — OCR software can only read letters, not pictures. The cover just has the title and the author’s name against (in this case) a beige background that looks like the texture of leather.

When this reformatting is done, page numbers change, so generally the company removes the table of contents and the index — both would be meaningless.

If you buy the book, though, you can go to their website and download a free PDF copy of the original book they scanned; in theory, this would allow you to see the intent behind the incomprehensible typo. They claim 99% accuracy, but that still amounts to a lot of typos, if you do the math: every hundredth word is botched. I noticed that even before I read the disclaimer or looked at their site. The book begins in mid-sentence, which I don’t think was Jepson’s intent. Also, there are no bibliographic or cataloging details, but the company explains how you can find all this information on their website. (I only know the book was first published in 1910 because that’s what I heard at the panel — you don’t see that, or the city of its publication, inside the cover like in a normal book.)

They claim to offer “millions of titles.” They have free bookclub trial offers, etc.

I’m neither promoting nor condemning the phenomenon, but I think it’s highly interesting. On the one hand, I’m glad extremely rare books can be made available this way; I don’t mind the typos too much, because it’s still a pretty good glimpse at what long-ago and/or obscure authors wrote, and typos have always been a fact of life for book-lovers. The monks in the monasteries added typos . . . uh, “quillos”? . . . from time to time, and they weren’t robots.

On the other hand, I roll my eyes at the mindless, impersonal sloppiness of it all. I feel a little like Japanese farmers feel when they hear about the American practice of planting crops from an airplane. (Yes, that is really done in the States! I’m not talking about crop-dusting, I’m talking about actual crop-planting! From the air.)

And am I the only one who wonders about the legality of this? I assume it’s okay, since these are printed volumes with the publisher’s contact information on them, and I bought this copy through Amazon, not in some back alley. But they claim to offer “all the greatest books of all time” for free on the related site www.million-books.com.

Thoughts? Questions? Discussion?

Groiiinnk! (Changing the subject with a monkey wrench. . . .)

Okay, my second topic is just a nice summer experience I had last Friday. I helped gather lotus blossoms by boat!

Lotus blossoms are greatly in demand in Japan at the time of Obon (August 13th). Obon is somewhat similar to Hallowe’en, with the spirits of the dead coming back to Earth. People use lotuses to decorate their homes for this festival. It’s a flower with spiritual connections for Buddhists. Probably you know that Buddha himself achieved his enlightened grasp of all things when a lotus blossom popped open.

Well, my friend K. runs a flower/fruit/vegetable market, and she got permission to use a certain person’s boat and harvest lotus blossoms from his pond. She recruited me as “boat wrangler.”

Lotus flowers are really interesting: they completely take over a pond. The water becomes absolutely choked with the tall stalks. The leaves are broad, and if you’re sitting in a boat on the pond’s surface, the lotuses tower over you. I had to move the boat about thirty feet from a shed to the water’s edge — I used a convenient grove of weeds as runners, so that I wasn’t scraping the hull over concrete. We asked, and the owner told us it was okay to plow the boat through the lotuses. As long as their roots are intact, there’s not much you can do that will hurt them.

I launched the boat. To our consternation, it had no oars or paddles. K. called the owner on her cell phone, and he said, “Oh, just pick up a stick from the garden and use that.” I wielded the longest, stoutest stick I could find, but it didn’t work well: near the shore, it would sink into the ooze of the pond’s bed; I could push the boat forward a little, but when I pulled the stick free of the mud, the boat would reverse its course and come back to where I started. Once we got out onto the pond’s center, the stick didn’t reach the bottom at all!

This is all happening in a dense, aquatic forest of lotuses, which aren’t thrilled about letting a boat pass. It’s like being stuck in the Sargasso Sea. It’s muggy, sweltering, and buggy. The sun was swiftly westering, and K. was worried about being stranded in the dark. She kept reminding me of how quickly the sun sets.

We discovered the most effective way to move the boat was to grasp lotus stems and pull, gently but steadily. Hand-walking this way, pulling on the left and right, I was able to navigate the pond, and we collected quite a batch of the uncanny pinkish blossoms.

The stems have to be snipped off underwater. (The water was as warm as a bath!) Then you put your thumb over the severed stalk and transfer the plant to a tub of water, such as we had in the boat.

That’s all there is to the story. Nothing dramatic happened; no mud monster awoke from the slime; the boat didn’t capsize, and we got back to shore well before dark. But the whole thing was one of the best experiences I’ve had in a long time. It was like being 13 again: a chance to play with a boat on a pond. We got sweaty, muddy, itchy, and generally filthy. But it was one of those moments outside time, when you’re with a good friend, working together, the weather is hot, school is out, and all the cares of the world recede into the distance. If I happen to live until I’m sixty, seventy, or eighty, and wherever the paths of life take me, that will be a day I remember: I’ll say, “I wish I could go back and re-live that evening of gathering lotus blossoms.”

[It’s actually the unopened ones we were harvesting — more like “buds” than “blossoms,” but “buds” doesn’t sound as nice.]

Happy Stories to all! This is the season for stories!

Hiroshima

Posted on July 29, 2010 by fsdthreshold

This post is not for the faint of heart. I will not sugar-coat anything. Read it only if you are prepared to look the specter of war in the face. Since it is something I am often asked about and have been asked again quite recently, I will reflect on my visit to Hiroshima and remember what I can. (We’re coming up on the anniversary of the bombing in a few days.)

The story begins for me when I was in Mr. Jones’s fifth- or sixth-grade reading class at the end of the 1970s. (I don’t remember which year it was; I had him as a reading teacher both years.) In the class, we read part of a book that is seared forever into my memory: The Bells of Nagasaki (Nagasaki no Kane), by Dr. Takashi Nagai. The excerpt we read (which may have been more “adaptation” than “excerpt”) was called “Child of Nagasaki,” and focused on the true story of Dr. Nagai’s daughter Kayano.

Dr. Nagai had been diagnosed with leukemia before the end of the war; he most likely contracted it from years of exposure to the X-ray machine used on his patients. He was only expected to live about three more years at the most. Then came August of 1945, and the bomb.

Kayano — though she lived about thirty years before our time — was a child just like us. She had a bigger brother Makoto. To keep the two children farther from potential air raids, they had been taken a short distance outside Nagasaki to stay with their grandparents. When the bomb fell, Kayano was four years old.

On August 9, 1945, Kayano saw a flash in the sky as if the sun had exploded, and a force like an invisible hand threw her across the room. When she looked up, something like a monstrous black tree made of smoke was towering over Nagasaki. And from that point on, life for her was nothing at all like the lives we knew.

Her father, also hurled across the room and half-buried in debris, had severe facial cuts from flying glass, but he stayed at the hospital for three or four days, working round the clock to treat the injured and the dying who filled the wards and lined the halls. His own home and his wife had been incinerated in the initial blast. Mrs. Nagai, a Christian, had been reduced to a soft pile of ash with her rosary nearby.

Dr. Nagai, his head swathed in bandages, trudged to the grandparents’ home to check on them and the children; he firmly warned Kayano and Makoto not to touch the strange, black rain that was falling. A short while later, the grandmother made the trek to the Nagai home and brought back some bone fragments from the children’s mother. (This is not as morbid as it sounds to western ears; Japanese cremate their dead, and the charred bone pieces that remain after cremation are handled with honor according to funerary custom. These bone fragments are called okotsu and are often kept in the home for awhile before being placed in a family grave.)

Dr. Nagai himself lived for several more years. His spiritual journey led him from Shintoism to atheism and ultimately to Christian faith. He wrote bestselling books that related the experience of Nagasaki to the world; the income thus generated was channeled into various means of helping the victims of war. Makoto and Kayano grew to adulthood; Kayano became a teacher.

That reading assignment terrified me on a deeper level than any fictional horror story I’d read. Even as kids, we were all too aware of the missiles in the silos and in the submarines: missiles aimed at the U.S.S.R., missiles aimed at all the major U.S. cities, missiles aimed at the whole world, and tense nations squared off against one another, each with the power to launch an irrevocable armageddon. I imagined the things Kayano Nagai had seen; I imagined it happening in Taylorville, Illinois. It kept me awake at night.

I knew there was nowhere to run from a nuclear holocaust. Tour guides at Mammoth Cave, answering the inevitable question, would explain that no, even a deep cave would offer little protection from radioactive fallout: a cave is an open, breathing system, full of water and air from the surface. Unlike the tornadoes that frequently devasted farms and towns in the Midwest, nuclear weapons brought more than city-leveling explosions; they poisoned the air, the water, and the ground. You were far better off if you died in the initial blast, because to be alive after it, when the black rain fell, was a nightmare beyond the power of any words to convey. One phrase used by eyewitnesses to describe the condition of still-living victims of Hiroshima was “the Death-in-Life.”

Hiroshima, as I understand it, had been spared most of the relentless bombing experienced by many other Japanese cities. On that clear, late-summer morning in 1945 (August 6th for the Japanese, because Japan is a day ahead; in the States, we remember it as the 5th), people were beginning their routines — finishing breakfast, heading for work, thinking about what a hot day it would be. There was the faint drone of a plane. . . . But just a single aircraft, not a squadron of B-29s with their payloads of thunder and fire; just a single aircraft, and very high up, barely a speck in the sky. Nothing to be alarmed at.

The plane made a sharp turn and raced away from the city. It was about a quarter past eight.

One elderly man, sitting on a porch that faced away from the blast, suddenly had the entire house flipped over on top of him. I’m guessing you’ve also heard the famous account of the man who was vaporized, but whose shadow remained on the wall behind him — a human silhouette slightly lighter than the charred surface all around. No one at first had any concept of the magnitude of the destruction. Everyone thought it was a localized cluster-bomb, and that they’d had the misfortune to be near it. No one could conceive that such damage had been done by a single bomb.

I visited Hiroshima with some friends in — as nearly as I can figure it — about 1990. (Anyone who has my newsletters from that era can check this date, and maybe you can find an important detail or two that I’ve forgotten. I would love to be able to compare my memories now with what I wrote then. Maybe someday. . . .)

I remember arriving before noon and having a picnic lunch under some willow trees beside a little river near the Peace Park. Hiroshima, since long before the war, had been famous for its willow trees. They are green and shimmering, more slender and wispy than the big-crowned weeping willows I grew up with in the Midwest. (In Japan, willows are strongly associated with ghosts — they’re the trees beneath which ghosts appear. This is an ancient belief and has nothing to do with Hiroshima, but it’s ironic.) At that picnic near the Peace Park, I remember watching some ducks swim and feeding them with pieces of our lunch. I remember thinking about what the riverside must have looked like in late 1945. I had trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that I could be standing there.

You may have seen pictures of the Atomic Bomb Dome (Genbaku Dome) — the domed, skeletal girder framework of a building that was the only thing left standing after the bomb went off. The structure remained because it was in the blast shadow, directly under where the bomb exploded. (The bomb was designed to detonate in midair to maximize the force of its destruction. Its blast spread outward from that central point, so only that one building, standing beneath the “hole of the doughnut,” was spared. Well, it wasn’t spared, it was burned to a crisp — but its framework stayed up, and was still there in the early nineties. I’m not sure it’s still there; it seems I heard a rumor awhile back that it was in structural trouble.)

And I mean, it was the only thing left standing. In the museum you can see a 360-degree composite photo taken from ground zero. (Remember when “ground zero” had a more general meaning for Americans, referring to the point at which any bomb went off? Now we have our own “Ground Zero,” which overshadows any other use of the term.) This photo is in stark black-and-white, and occupies the wall of a large, round room, so you can turn all around and see it as if you were standing there at the bomb site. It shows nothing but devastation to the horizon in every direction — no buildings, no trees, no people, no vehicles — miles and miles of nothing.

One floor of the museum has glass cases displaying artifacts: sometimes barely-recognizable globs of melted and re-hardened metal that were once everyday objects.

I vividly remember a set of maps of various major world cities. With concentric circles and shading, each map showed the range and degree of effect if an atomic bomb equivalent to the Hiroshima device were to be detonated in that city. Only a couple years before, I’d been a student in the Chicago area; I spent a long time studying the Chicago map, noticing which part of the city would be utterly obliterated, which parts would experience collapsed buildings and immolation, which would undergo shattered windows and widespread fires . . . and how far outside Chicago there would be some effects . . . and how far the deadly radiation would extend . . . and how very, very far out you’d have to be to experience no effects. Studying the impact of a similar bomb on a city I knew pretty well brought the horror home on yet another level. [And that was a little old pioneer rinky-dink A-bomb — a mere firecracker compared to the nukes of today.]

The museum had copies of the flyers dropped all across the Japanese countryside by Allied planes, flyers in Japanese urging the people to surrender, to stop supporting their government, whose policies were only leading them to increased suffering. There’s no way to measure it, but I wonder what effect, if any, such flyers had. When a farmer in his paddy picked one up and read it, did he think anything beyond “This is enemy propaganda”? I’ve heard from various friends and older people here that the Japanese government propagated the image of Americans as looking like demons, with faces like horses. (Of course American propaganda at the time portrayed much the same picture of Japanese as ill-favored, large-toothed, nearsighted monsters.) It is greatly to the credit of “the Greatest Generation” that, when U.S. troops arrived in Japan on occupation duty, people here were stunned at how different they actually were from the horrible reputation that had preceded them; I’ve heard that from several firsthand sources. Also, I knew a pastor of the Japan Lutheran Church who was a WWII veteran. He was stationed in Okinawa when American forces landed there. He’d been told to avoid capture at all costs, since the enemy would torture and kill him — so he fought like mad to escape from the tightening circle of green-clad soldiers. At last he was too starved and weak and exhausted to wriggle any farther, and they got him. And he said it was the best thing that had happened to him since the war began. He was well-treated, clean, and had food and water for the first time in many days.

But I digress. I also knew a Christian man who worked in the offices of the Japan Lutheran Church and was a survivor of Hiroshima. He was cheerful and pleasant, but had limited mobility and some spinal disfiguration.

Do you know that the city where I live, Niigata, was very nearly the recipient of the second atomic bomb? There are copies of the orders on display in the Hiroshima museum — I’ve read them. The American high command issued orders to drop the bombs on the primary targets of “Hiroshima and Niigata.” The Hiroshima bombing took place as planned. When the second plane flew over Niigata, the city was having its typical weather that I’m always complaining about: solid cloud cover. The bombardier couldn’t see a thing through his scope. So, following the Plan B protocol, the plane turned south to Nagasaki. I’ve often reflected on that. If Niigata had had nice weather on August 9, 1945, most of the people I know here would either have died or would never have been born. Dr. Nagai of Nagasaki would likely have succumbed quietly to his leukemia; his wife would have had more years to pray the rosary in this vale of tears; and Kayano wouldn’t have seen her terrible “tree” in the sky. But there would have been other Dr. Nagais, other Kayanos up here in “Snow Country.”

Finally, the thing I remember most about the Peace Park and museum at Hiroshima: one wall inside the museum is covered with pictures drawn by children who experienced the bombing. They’re bright, colorful sketches, some messy, some very neat. I don’t imagine that anyone could gaze at those images and read the children’s hand-lettered reports without feeling it on the deepest level. Even after all these years, tears are coming to my eyes at the mere memory of it.

When we were kids, my cousin and I wrote illustrated stories about zombies, or about the attacks of dinosaurs, grizzly bears, or sharks. Like most little boys, we delighted in all things gruesome. The pictures at Hiroshima are quite similar to what my cousin and I produced for fun — mayhem, body parts not where they should be, heavy use of the red crayon. But these were not stories born of the imagination. These were things the kids had seen, and the subjects of the pictures were their family members, their classmates, their teachers, their neighbors. For me, those drawings and words from children are the most eloquent and powerful testimony of what happened at Hiroshima.

Finally, two stories from a friend who was a little girl in Oosaka during the war. (Yes, that’s “Osaka,” but the “o” is actually long, or double.) Unlike the atomic bomb sites, Oosaka was very heavily hit by the conventional bombing raids. This friend of mine was the only member of her class to live through the war. Imagine that — think of those black-and-white photos from our elementary-school days; imagine X’s drawn across the face of this friend, that friend, that friend, the teacher . . . X’s drawn over every single face but yours.

She tells of how, during one bombing raid, a group of her classmates were all scrambling to get inside a bomb shelter; everything around them was going up in deafening explosions, plumes of fire, the ground shaking, rubble flying . . . for some reason, she didn’t make it to the shelter — she fell down or something. Then the next contact bomb landed squarely on top of the shelter, and everyone who had made it inside was killed.

And she tells of wandering down to the river after the bombing raid. She stood on the riverbank, but she could not see the water — not any of it — because the entire riverbed was choked with human bodies. The same phenomenon took place at Hiroshima, and probably at Nagasaki: to escape the horrible heat, the burning, and the thirst, multitudes headed for the river. No river was big enough to accommodate them all.

Hiroshima today is a bustling city again — rebuilt, like nearly all of Japan. The willows are back, and I’d guess they have plenty of ghosts appearing beneath their tremulous branches in the silver moonlight. What’s old in Japan is very old — temples and shrines date back centuries, over a thousand years in many cases. But most of Japan changes its face again and again. I’ve never seen neighborhoods morph as quickly as they do here. You come home from work and a house or building you always pass is suddenly missing. You come home the next day, and a new one has taken its place.

For an account of the Nagasaki bombing and its aftermath, I think it would be hard to find a better book than The Bells of Nagasaki, by Dr. Takashi Nagai.

For Hiroshima, I very highly recommend the book Hiroshima, by John Hersey. Some years ago, I encountered this book when I was trying to learn speed-reading so that I could get through more of the books I’m always wanting to read. I started reading Hiroshima quickly, but it’s a book that deserves a person’s undivided attention. I slowed down almost immediately and read it word-for-word. It follows the lives of several unrelated people — real people from various walks of life, one of them a priest who wasn’t even Japanese — all of whom were in Hiroshima on the day of the bombing. Through interviews and painstaking research, Hersey reconstructs their experiences of that day and the days following. And then he jumps forward a couple decades with follow-ups on what they were all doing then, what their lives had been like since the bomb. It’s one of those books that should be a part of the education of everyone living in our times; it’s a book you won’t ever forget.

July 4th Is Here Again

Posted on July 4, 2010 by fsdthreshold

Happy Fourth of July! How can I not greet you all on this holiday, another of my favorite days in the year? I hope you’re enjoying the Deep Summer! Here, the last three days have actually felt like summer at last: blessed heat and humidity, perspiration, rooms that swelter until you can get a window open, arms sticking to the tabletop, fans blowing warm air around, and to sleep at night is like lying in a cast-iron frying pan, sizzling away . . . I love it! This is the season — long may it last!

Writing is going well, by grace! It was a banner week: 7,296 words written on the novel in the first three days of July! The story is building momentum, and I’m really excited.

Anyway, I was glancing back at 4th of July posts written the past two years in an effort not to repeat myself too much. (If you’re inclined to go back and review them for more of Glory Day, you can easily find them with the “search” function: last year’s was called “Thunder and Providence,” and I think the year before’s was called “Glory Day.”)

The posting today won’t be too elaborate — I’m about “written out” for the weekend (but you’ll agree the energy has been well-spent, right?). But here are a few more good 4th of July memories:

I had a wonderful uncle. I’ll call him “Uncle Art” (since that was his name). He had an ever-active imagination, a genuine sense of fun, and a mischievous streak a mile wide; and, being an adult, he had the wherewithal to carry out his schemes. On different occasions, he built a moving humanoid robot, made a long stop-action animated film using my Planet of the Apes dolls and dinosaurs, and populated my grandma’s garden with wooden gardeners who moved when the wind blew.

But in the estimation of us kids, one of the absolute best things he ever built was his 4th of July cannon. It was made of a simple, heavy pipe — maybe a yard long, and with a bore just slightly larger than a tin can. The bottom end was capped and welded shut; there was a hole for a fuse, and (like Gandalf) Uncle Art had a magical black powder that would explode with incredible force when fire was applied. Heh, heh, heh.

He brought that out to our backyard and set it up so that the barrel was pointing northeast, out over the cornfield. In went the magical powder charge, some wadded newspaper, two empty beer cans [provided by my parents — I won’t besmirch Uncle Art’s good name! — as far as I know, he never touched alcohol], and more wadded newspaper. We’d all stand well back, covering our ears, and Uncle Art would light the fuse.

Then would come a detonation that CRACK-ACKed as an echo off the barn, off the house, and thundered around the horizon, rolling away through the woods. Smoke and fire spewed from the cannon. The wadding was immolated, of course, and the beer cans were projected far, far out into the corn. Half the fun was running out into the cornfield to hunt for the cans.

Midwest farm kids know what a joyous place a cornfield is: your bare feet sink into the warm, fine soil that plumes between your toes like moon dust — it’s like running through an endless expanse of talcum powder. You have to hold your arms up in front of your face, because the edges of corn leaves are sharp — as you run, you end up with uncountable stinging, itchy, mostly invisible lacerations. Bugs tumble onto you and get down your collar. The field is like some kind of giant game board: you can go down the row or across the rows — there are two directions to move in. It’s a secret world of steam and green shadows. Sometimes there are strange clearings where some stalks have not grown well — a fairy ring deep in the field, hidden from the world. We used to love to build campfires in those when we were older and sit out until the sky paled, watching the stars and the meteors.

We’d usually eventually find the beer cans — or what was left of them. They’d be way out there, nearly to the timber line . . . barely recognizable, flattened and shredded — some ribbons of aluminum, the tiny corner of a logo or brand name remaining. We would scoop them up and proudly take them back to civilization.

Then Uncle Art would re-load the cannon, and we’d do it all over again.

One year, some horses were being kept in the little-used livery stable next door. After about two blasts from the cannon, a very irate lady marched into our yard and yelled, “Will you knock it off, already? You’re scaring the horses!”

Oh, I’ll bet we were. We were scaring the dead in the cemetery up the road. We apologized and knocked it off. But you can’t “knock off” the entire holiday, when things are blowing up all over. With all apologies to horses and dogs, whom I dearly love, the Fourth of July cannot be silenced. All you with sensitive ears, retreat to your stalls and basements, and give us this one day; we promise to be extra quiet for the next week. The Fourth is meant to resound — to burst and flash with brilliant sparks — blossoms of fire a mile high, a mile wide.

Happy Glory Day!

A Writer’s Best (Non-Human) Friend

Posted on June 26, 2010 by fsdthreshold

After all these years, I specifically remember only two of the presents I received upon graduating from high school. I know there were many others, and I recall the wonderful gathering of friends and family at our house — and the many cards wishing me well. But, material presents, I remember two: the Taylor family gave me a big black umbrella, which I thought was very cool — it seemed like just the thing to have as a college student; the other, from my parents, was Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary. They filled out the front page: Presented to Fred Durbin by Mom & Dad, June 6, 1984. [Wow! That was the anniversary of D day, 40 years later! Isn’t that a solemn realization in and of itself? Forty years before I exited the troop ship and charged up onto the beach of the world, other young — and not-so-young — guys were doing it for real. If they hadn’t done what they did then, I would have been going out into a much different world. . . .]

But anyway: that dictionary has been my constant companion ever since. It’s been to college, it’s crossed the ocean several times, and wherever I’ve set up a workspace for even a short while, my dictionary has been within easy reach.

In 1993-4, the year I worked for a Japanese company thinly disguised as a school, I had an actual desk at work — that’s the only year I’ve ever had a workspace all my own on the job, a desk with my stuff on and in it — and yes, to be sure, my dictionary was there. My fellow native-English-speaking teachers, who had desks all around mine, regarded me as “the guy to have proofread your writing before you use it in any public way.” One co-worker in particular would ask me to proofread things, and whenever I would frown slightly and reach for my dictionary, she would laugh and say, “Okay, what did I misspell now?” (A dictionary at work is a great tool for politeness. It takes the heat for you. You never have to tell co-workers that you think they’re wrong; you adopt the official stance of being “not sure,” you look it up, and the authoritative answer is there in black-and-white!)

About ten or so years ago, I got to  thinking that the language had changed enough since 1984 that it was time for a new dictionary. Not that I wanted to get rid of my dear old Webster’s from my parents — not at all! But I felt it was time for that one to have a junior partner, a helper, a back-watcher. My mom was of the opinion that dictionaries never go out of date; she was still using the Webster’s she received when she went to college. Truth be told, I was using that one (of hers), too. It was our “house dictionary.” Mom had it on a wooden stand that was probably supposed to have been for a Bible. Throughout my childhood and even into my Japan years (since my dictionary was in Japan), I would run into the dining room when I needed to look up a word. It was tattered from decades of use and the pages were yellowing, but it still got the job done.

But I longed for a dictionary that reflected the current language, so when my friend C. in Niigata asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I said I’d really like the latest edition of Webster’s Dictionary. As it turned out, the local bookstore didn’t have a Webster’s when we went shopping. However, they had a beautiful Oxford English Dictionary. I immediately saw the wisdom and attractiveness of having both my Webster’s (American) and the Oxford (British). I could compare spellings and usages in the two countries as well as across time. So that was my birthday present from C. that year, and it’s one of the birthday presents I’ll always remember most — because now it stays with me, too, wherever I am.

C. is full of questions. Once he asked me something about the battle of Thermopylae. The next time I saw him, I gave him some detailed notes. He said, “Wow! You went ‘Net-surfing!” I said, “No, I looked it up in the Oxford Dictionary you gave me.”

After my year in the States, I was shipping things back to Japan, and the guy who runs the shipping company in my hometown looked askance at these two heavy dictionaries I was sending overseas. It’s not cheap to send books that hefty. He asked, “Don’t they have dictionaries in Japan?” Well, yes, they do . . . but these were my dictionaries. They have children in Europe, too, but if you’re moving there with your family, I’ll bet you’ll take your own kids, even though they cost.

A third dictionary joined the team after Mom passed away: not her old one, which is now in storage (but will be back on my shelf someday, Lord willing, when/if I set up a desk in the States), but a deluxe Merriam-Webster’s that my dad gave her. I haven’t really gotten into the habit of using it, because my Webster’s and Oxford do the job so well for me. But still, I’m glad the deluxe edition is there.

So what’s all the fuss? What’s so great about dictionaries? After all, our computers have spell-checkers, right? And if you need to know anything, you can look it up on-line. Plus, there are perfectly good, state-of-the-art electronic dictionaries no bigger than a pocket calculator that could save me hundreds of dollars in shipping expenses. Yes, but. . . .

Partly, it’s the difference between buying a book on Amazon and buying a book in a brick-and-mortar bookstore. The difference is getting to see and walk past and handle all those books you don’t buy.

When I go to look up a word in a paper dictionary, I almost never get to that word without being ensnared by four or five other words first. Seriously — can you go right to the word you went after, and not read anything else? It’s like putting a mouse into a cheese shop and telling him, “Go straight to the far wall, tag it, and come straight back here.” Not going to happen.

There was an English prof we had in college who would say, “I got the new such-and-such dictionary. I haven’t finished reading it yet. I’m about halfway through.” We thought that was hilarious, the idea of sitting and reading a dictionary. Personally, I’ve never done that, but the longer I live and the more deeply I appreciate language, the less funny that sounds to me.

Dictionaries give you definitions, of course. When I read H.P. Lovecraft, he nearly always sends me running for the dictionary. When I read Lud-in-the-Mist, I made a list of words to look up. You want to know what the list was? I’ve got it right here. Are you ready?

pleached, propinquity, ribands, ribbands, chiaroscuro, hierophantic, cozeners/cozening, plangent, potsherds, poncifs, fulminate, byre, barouche, exogamy, cockchafe, spurious, disquisition, spinney, brawn [as a food], syllabub, squills, “mopping and mowing,” hartshorn, carminative, civet cat, velleity, tuftaffities, sententious, osier, porphyry, quinsy, perdurable, casuistry, cicerone, frangipane, perroration, pullulating

Be honest, now. If you knew the meanings of even most of those, you’re a far better man than I! (Even if, like Eowyn, you’re not a man!)

But also, dictionaries help us with spelling. Like I’ve said, “queue,” “oubliette,” and “oeuvre”. . . . I have to look them up every. Single. Time. (It’s like trying to figure out which side of the car the gas tank inlet is on. If you’re like me, you squirm inwardly every single time you pull into a gas station — which side is it?!)

But those are just the clinical uses of the dictionary. The real reason I love my dictionaries, not simply rely on them, is that they’re like friends who actually help me write.

Writing is a notoriously solitary activity. We writers cloister ourselves off from the world, face the blank screen or paper, and make our sacrifices. We miss the TV shows and the visits and the concerts, etc., in order to walk the lonely path, that line from word to word to word. No one can do it for us. No one can tell us what to write. Except. . . .

“Where do you get your ideas?” people ask us. “Where do these ideas come from?”

I think the single best answer just may be “from the dictionary.” The words we use are all in there, after all. (Well, no, that’s not true. We speculative fiction writers insist upon making up a sizable percentage of our vocabulary. But the dictionary is a great help in making things up, too.) I can’t tell you how many times the dictionary has bailed me out when I’ve needed a name for a character or a place. Not that I necessarily use a word as-is to be a character’s name — I’m not writing Pilgrim’s Progress. But words have resonances; words have sounds and elements. I may lift a part of this word and combine it with a part of that one. I may borrow a word for the way it means or the way it rings. One thing can lead to another — the dominoes fall — and sometimes the dictionary can even unravel plot problems. It’s the wise friend who’s always there. It’s comforting, solid, and infinitely sane. It’s realistic, your anchor to the Earth. It can absorb your tears and help you see more clearly when you’re ready to.

Webster’s is the king of dictionaries for two reasons: it shows where words are divided (which Oxford doesn’t) — and far more wonderfully, it comes with pictures! They’re not there for every word. But for a huge number of words whose meanings are hard to grasp or envision, Webster’s is there with a visual rendering. Again and again over the years, a picture has snagged my gaze, and I’ve understood something new and crucial about my story. If a picture truly is worth a thousand words, then Webster’s is priceless.

A dictionary can help you find things that you didn’t know you were looking for. Character names . . . costuming . . . architecture . . . plot points . . . conflicts . . . historical details . . . complications . . . specificity. Precision. The right tool for the right job. At every stage of the writing process, from conceptual work to the final buffing of a manuscript on its way out the door, a dictionary is the friend to have beside you.

So how about you, dear readers? In your walk of life — in your career or your hobby — what is the tool you wouldn’t want to be without, and why?

The Enchanted Hour

Posted on June 12, 2010 by fsdthreshold

It’s been called the Hour of Magic . . . the Enchanted Hour . . . that time when the sun only just peeps over the edge of the world, going or coming . . . when shadows take prominence, shapes become fantastic, the sky is painted with extraordinary hues, and the light is soft and strange. Even the words we have for it are beautiful: dusk . . . twilight . . . gloaming.

The transition time between day and night has always been seen as mystical. Ancient fairy-lore suggests it is a prime time for encounters with the Good Folk. How often it is recalled in story, song, and poetry! And I’ll just bet we all have some vivid memories of twilights — long ago or not-so-long ago. Among this crowd in this season, I think this topic could be one of our best times yet!

Since I’m wearing the blog conductor’s hat, I’ll start us off. First, I’ll go back to summers in junior high and high school. My dad’s favorite place in the world was the pond at the back of our ten-acre plot in rural Illinois. In the corner of the long, thin property, behind the field, and accessed by a quarter-mile of grassy lane, the pond was bordered on two sides by wild timber teeming with wildlife. Many’s the time we’d startle a deer drinking at the water’s edge. At our approach, it would spring away into the trees, a flash of tawny grace. The chorus of coyotes is typical night music there. I’ve met bright red foxes near the pond; opossums, raccoons, skunks, more snakes than I care to count . . . and you’ve heard, I think, of the adventure Mr. Brown Snowflake and I had down there on a moonless night, being stalked by a bobcat.

The hike down to the pond was the perfect length: long enough that you felt you were leaving the everyday world behind, but short enough that you could get there pretty quickly. Of course, we always had special pond vehicles: a barely-running car or a pickup truck with no doors (for easy jumping in and out of) — vehicles that were just for our land, not road-licensed; and, like most farm kids, I learned to drive them when I was about ten years old. [The problem with no doors on a farm truck is that wildlife thinks the truck belongs to it: more than once, we found discarded white snakeskins, disturbingly long — and diving into the truck without looking could mean diving through a giant spider web, spider present. In the country, you learn to keep your eyes open.]

But anyway, I was talking about my dad. He loved to go down to the pond and work: mowing with his weedcutter, sickling by hand, or reinforcing the dam, all of which we did together, and I’m sure there must be a place in Heaven for doing it again. As it got too dark to see the weeds, Dad would retire to a bucket seat out of some old car that he had placed on a high point a few feet from the water. He’d sit there wearing his ever-present bill hat, smoking a cigarette. (Can I say “cigarette” in a public forum?) From a long way off through the dusk, I could see the red spark of the cigarette’s end, a little beacon showing me where Dad was. If we’d stopped work early enough, while there was still light, I’d sit on a rock, or the concrete retaining wall — or best of all, on some piece of rusting farm machinery half-overgrown by weeds — and I’d read fantasy as the light faded. I specifically remember reading parts of Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique and parts of Stephen R. Donaldson’s Lord Foul’s Bane down at the pond.

Mom, for her part, loved to pull weeds in the garden until it got too dark to see. Or to pull weeds in any of the dozens of flower beds she had all over the yard. She was a firm believer in pulling weeds, not cutting them. “You’ve got to get the roots out,” she said. I always tried to convince her that, if floating seeds and spores had planted the weeds there once, they would do it again — it was the wonderful way of the green world — and that cutting or mowing was faster (and much more fun!). But she’d have none of it. I think we were both partly right.

So I’d help her pull weeds as the sun went down, and we’d have itchy hands that smelled of plant juices, our skin needing the occasional spine or bur removed with tweezers in the bathroom’s yellow light. And Mom and I would do the same: when she’d pulled enough weeds, she’d sit on the porch with her cigarette glowing, and I’d sit on a lawn chair or a cart and read H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, Lord Dunsany. . . .

Childhood games were the best, weren’t they? Playing and playing with the neighborhood kids as the purple shadows deepened, as the sky shifted from gold to red to lavender to purple, and night came on with slow wings. If you were playing hide-and-seek, the twilight helped you hide. The dark made your dramatic charge back to home base all the more dramatic. And always, just before you finally surrendered and went inside to baths and beds, you would stop just for a moment and gaze in awe toward the west, where the last glow was crimson behind the silhouette trees, and the soybean mill stood like a black castle.

I remember the summer of 2006, after both my parents had passed away, and I was living in our old house, slowly cleaning it out, discovering all the old relics of our pasts — long lost toys, photos, Dad’s early writing, the treasures of my parents’ combined libraries. . . . By then, the pond was overgrown — ringed round with new trees, high with weeds — but still there, a haven for the deer and the foxes and the birds, which would make Dad happy. Weeds had taken over much of the yard, sharing the space with Mom’s flowers, some of which are still coming up unassisted to this day. (In her last years, when Mom was too arthritic to do much weed-pulling and Dad was too frail to mow, Mom declared that she was deliberately letting the yard grow into a “restored historic Illinois prairie,” which was a good thing, recommended by ecologists. Always looking at things from the best possible angle, my mom!)

During that summer, I nearly always made it a point to be outdoors when the sun neared the western horizon. I’d walk around the yard, studying the trees and the weeds, always accompanied by the dogs, who understand a person’s moods at least as well as any human being. Sometimes they’d wag and jump up and ask for petting; sometimes they’d sit quietly beside me on the sun-warmed road, peering west across the fields, watching the light go behind the bean mill.

And the fireflies! At our place, they come out by the thousands — yellow-green, Earth-bound stars! Winking and winking, far and near, high and low, from the trees to the fields to the forest. They are the heralds of things ancient and timeless, things whispered and read and re-told, the emissaries of Faery.

Give us what you’ve got: stories, memories of the dusk — all the tales that are meet and right to share! (Dawn is okay, too!)

Take Me to the Fair

Posted on June 6, 2010 by fsdthreshold

As far as I know, this is a wellspring of memories we haven’t yet drawn from on this blog: carnivals and county fairs. Over the years, I’ve tried to capture some of those recollections, first in an unfocused attempt at a literary short story, “County Fair” (more than a dozen years ago now!), and more recently in a story called “Glory Day,” which is out of the nest and under consideration.

But fairs and carnivals, particularly when we were kids and teenagers. . . . I suspect we’ve all got some fond mental pictures. I think July is when the fair comes to my hometown, so we’re early — but for many of you, I know the weather already feels like July (you fortunate people!). [At least I haven’t had to use my kerosene heater for three days now.]

Taylorville is the seat of Christian County, so the county fair is held on our fair grounds every summer. When I was little, Mom would take me out there. Usually we’d end up going at least twice during the week the fair was in town. We’d go after 9:00 p.m., when the attendant opened the gate and admission was free. As we’d drive west down Main Cross Street, we’d start to see a glow in the sky over the west end of town. Then we’d hear the snatches of calliope music, the growl of tractor engines running the rides, and the dozens of intermingled game noises — beeps and tweets and boiinnngggs. It seemed so wonderful and magical to me then — all the lights in the dark, velvety prairie night . . . the food, the rides, the haunted house with weird laughter and screams coming out of it . . . the carnival people with their tattoos, urging people to play games and win prizes. The field’s grass would be pressed down by the tread of hundreds and hundreds of feet, and flattened paper cups and cigarette butts were here and there.

My mom liked to play a game where you put a coin on a color of your choice, and the game-master (usually a tough-looking fortyish lady) would let some random player from the crowd throw a ball into a net, from where it would wander down through a hole onto a spinning color wheel (like a roulette wheel). (Or like Wheel of Fortune.) The ball would stop on a color, and the person who placed a coin on that color patch would win, and all the other coins would get swept up and dumped into the carnival lady’s apron pocket. Depending on the denomination of the coin you’d wagered, you could choose your prize from various hanging tiers of toys. I remember having a medium-sized, pale purple teddy bear that I loved as a very young child; it had come from the county fair.
 
I’ve been back to the fair as an adult, and it always amazes me how small it is. Was it always so small? Back then, it seemed to stretch on and on. But it’s still somehow fun to go, and find scraps and patches of the old magic drifting here and there between tents, like strands of dandelion fluff stuck to thistles. Even now, I can turn around and hear just the right sound, or catch just the right whiff of something, and the present melds with the past. Things get all Bradbury.

I remember one teenage year on the night of the Miss Christian County pageant. The show was over, things were winding down, and the midway was thinning out. I ran into my friend (we’ll call him “R”), a guy I’d known since gradeschool. We were talking near the all-but-empty grandstand, when who should call out and approach us but the girl who’d just been crowned Queen . . . Miss Christian County! She was a year or two ahead of us in school. She may have been in chorus with us — I’m no longer sure — but of course we weren’t friends. We were geeky guys who played D&D and read books and stuff, and she was this gorgeous person who probably wouldn’t have noticed us in the school halls. (I’m not blaming her; that’s just the way life is, right? Kids — and grownups — move in different circles.)

But anyway, she says hi to us and calls us by name, as if she’s really happy to see us, as if we’re her best friends. We stand and talk and congratulate her. I’m sure R and I are both wondering why on Earth she’s alone after just winning the pageant, chosen as #1 among 30 or 40 of the county’s finest young women.

She asks if we would walk her back to her car. (!) The midway is muddy and uneven in places, and she’s wearing impractical high-heeled shoes and a long evening gown. She hands one of us her giant bouquet of flowers to carry, and she takes each of us by an arm, and we escort her across the fair grounds as it’s all settling down for the night, going to sleep, the engines shutting off, the lights starting, in places, to wink out.

That’s all there is to the story — we don’t save her from a marauding motorcycle gang or anything. We escort her safely back to her car, and she thanks us, and we say goodbye. She drives away, and we go on with our school lives, and I don’t recall that we ever talk with her again. Who knows why she was driving away alone on a night that has to be quite a glorious experience for a Midwest teenage girl? Probably she was meeting up with family and friends somewhere — we’ll never know. The point is, for a few minutes that evening, we two frogs from the pond got turned into princes and defended a princess against darkness and mud.

 We had funnel cakes at our fair. There were corn dogs, of course, and popcorn (which no one got, because you could get it year-’round at the theater); there was cotton candy (isn’t that mystifying stuff, the way it just disintegrates when you put it into your mouth?), and there were lemon shake-ups (lemonade with ice and slices of lemon floating around in it). Best of all — the absolute KING of fair food — was something called Indian Bread. It was a local thing: a man named Les C. had a secret recipe for making it. Imagine a big, doughy square of cakey bread — deep fried in a vat, so it gets all wavy — then taken out and liberally slathered with semi-transparent white icing. You’d get that on a big napkin. It was piping hot, so you were in pain as you tore off a piece. For a while, the icing was still liquid and dripping. Halfway through the piece, it would harden into a nice, white, opaque frosting. Les C. has passed on now, but Mom used to play Bingo with his daughter. I asked her at one Bingo session if she had Les’s secret recipe for Indian Bread, and she said, “Oh, yes!” But I wonder if she ever makes it. . . .? I never see it at the county fair any more. We just have funnel cakes, which are a poor vestige.

I could go on and on, but I’ll stop there. I would truly love to hear any memories — daytime or nighttime — of magical (or mundane) fair or carnival experiences that you’d care to tell!

The Piper in the Woods

Posted on May 12, 2010 by fsdthreshold

“This is the night of revelation. This is the night the dolls wake. This is the night of the dreamer in the attic. This is the night of the piper in the woods.” — Steven Millhauser in Enchanted Night

Spring comes on little goat feet. . . .

If I were a scholar fixin’ to write a research paper, I would like to explore the use of Fauns, Satyrs, and the god Pan in English literature. This is a topic that has long intrigued me. These enigmatic figures dance through the shade and the starry darkness of our consciousness, but what is our fascination with them? Bear with me — no, goat with me — if you will, gentle readers, and let’s embark — embark — on a little walk among the trees. (I’ve just paid about ten bucks to the pun fund — at this rate I’ll be broke by the end of the next paragraph.) I’d like to do a little defining, a little comparing of examples, and finally a little theorizing about our wild friends, the horned pipers in the glens.

Detail from Self-Portrait by Frederic S. Durbin, March 2010.

First, let’s look to J.E. Zimmerman’s Dictionary of Classical Mythology. (This is the dictionary we used in Professor Froehlich’s Greek & Roman mythology class at Concordia, and it’s one of the few books that, as a writer and reader, I would never want to be without.)

Zimmerman tells us that Pan (Greek) is the same as Faunus (Roman).

Pan is the son of Hermes and Dryope. He’s the “Greek god of flocks and shepherds, forests and wild life, and fertility; patron of shepherds and hunters. Part man, part goat, with ears, horns, tail, and hind legs of a goat — playful, lascivious, unpredictable, always lecherous. He invented the flute with seven reeds which he called syrinx after the nymph Syrinx who had been transformed into the reed he cut for his first Pan-pipe. Shepherds loved his reed pipe, and Pan’s musical contest with Apollo is famous. He loved and pursued many nymphs. . . .” Zimmerman goes on to cite ancient sources of Pan references, which include the Aeneid, Herodotus, and Pausanias. “In English literature,” Zimmerman interestingly says, “poems about Pan are more numerous than distinguished; references to him are made by Spenser; Milton; Marvell; Cowley; Wordsworth; Shelley; Keats; Swinburne; Forster.”

So if I were that scholarly type fixin’ to do the research paper, I’d have my work cut out for me, chasing down all those references! Fortunately, I’m just a blog-tender, so I can deal in rumors, unsubstantiated “facts,” opinions, and whims. I can just tell you what I think. And that’s the beauty of a blog, right? We read and write them in order to talk about cool stuff — which, of course, sometimes has great applicability to our lives and our projects and our service, whatever it may be.

When we look up “Faunus” in Zimmerman, we’re told that he’s “Also Pan. God of agriculture, crops, prophecy, fertility, and country life.” The sole reference there is Aeneid vii. With that wording, Faunus sounds a little more staid and sober than Pan — sort of a Pan in midlife, a Pan who has settled down and become somewhat responsible. That may be because Faunus is a family man — er, god. He has a wife (or by some accounts a daughter) called Fauna, also known as Bona Dea or Bona Mater. She’s the goddess of fertility, nature, farming, and animals. “She never saw a man after her marriage with Faunus. Her uncommon chastity brought her rank among the gods after her death. Her followers are called Fauni.”

Note that point: the Fauni (Fauns) are followers of this nice, chaste goddess, not directly of Faunus himself. That may well be why Fauns seem to have a better reputation than Satyrs. C.S. Lewis’s Mr. Tumnus is a Faun. And in my own book The Sacred Woods, my Faun character is indignant when he’s mistaken for a Satyr. [“‘I’d like you better if you’d stop calling me a Satyr,’ said Mr. Girandole. ‘I’ve told you I’m a Faun. Satyrs are a vulgar folk. You won’t see me drinking wine by the skinful.’ / ‘And woman?’ R____ grinned waggishly. ‘You run catch woman?’ / ‘Mind your own business,’ said Mr. Girandole.”]

Well, what about Satyrs, then? Zimmerman reports: the Satyrs (or Satyri) are “sylvan deities that represented the luxuriant forces of nature; attendants of Dionysus.” (Dionysus! Say no more, squire! Eh? Eh?! Dionysus is the god of wine and revelry. [He’s that very same Bacchus, the youngest of the twelve great Olympians.] So the Satyrs were the ones having the keg parties.) “They were known for their orgies and lasciviousness. They looked like men, but had the legs and feet of goats, with short horns on their heads, and their entire bodies covered with hair. Some Satyrs were gods of the woods, and followers of Pan.”

Very interesting, huh? This would require more research, of course — and I may be reading more into the distinction than Zimmerman or any of the mythmakers intended — but based on these dictionary entries alone, it looks like the Fauns were followers of Fauna (the virtuous goddess), and the Satyrs were associated with Dionysus and Pan. Satyrs may also have been hairier than Fauns — hair over their entire bodies, Zimmerman says. So if that painting of mine is right at all, it must be a picture of a Faun, not a Satyr. (Pan also had the ears of a goat, which is overlooked by many artists.)

So much for the definitions: now we know whom we’re talking about; we know what the theme is as we consider the variations.

As soon as we get out of the classical myths and into English literature and into cinema, the lines start to blur, and I think it’s impossible to preserve the distinctions among Satyrs, Fauns, Pan, and Faunus. In Pan’s Labyrinth, for example: the movie’s title says one thing, but I’m pretty sure the Faun says he’s “a Faun.” (But when asked his name, he laughingly declares that he has many, most of them pronounceable only by the trees. That’s one of my favorite lines of the film.)

You all know I’m not one who can claim to have read widely; but I’d like to examine the treatment of Faun-esque characters in seven works: Steven Millhauser’s Enchanted Night (Crown Publishers, 1999); the movie Pan’s Labyrinth (2006, directed by Guillermo del Toro); two works of Arthur Machen (details to follow); C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia (my Collier/Macmillan edition of the first one of those is copyrighted in 1950; Lewis scholars, feel free to clarify); my own novel The Sacred Woods (me, spring/summer 2009); and Kenneth Grahame’s classic The Wind in the Willows. My theory is that these stories assign to the Pan-like figures one or more of the following roles:

1. beguiler/enchanter

2. messenger/instructor in things magical

3. corruptor/the diabolic

4. helper

5. the Divine

Millhauser’s Pan-type figure in Enchanted Night is of the first type: he pipes in the dark woods on a summer night, and the town’s children are roused out of their dreams. The music lures them into the forest, where they ultimately encounter the man with goat-legs, dancing and dancing, playing his flute. It’s a dangerous scenario, but Millhauser’s piper doesn’t harm the children. He simply enchants them with his music, and they come to listen: “He turns and turns, bending almost to the grass, rising high, a moon-dancer, a flute-dreamer, as the children gather in the clearing to listen to the dark, sweet music of the piper in the woods. They must have this music. It’s the sound of elves under the earth, of cities at the bottom of the sea. In the clearing the children listen, their lips slightly parted, their eyes veiled and heavy-lidded.” When the night is over, “At the first glimmer of gray in the sky, the piper in the woods looks up, bends and spins once more, and breaks off abruptly. In the shocking silence he beckons toward the sky, then turns and vanishes into the woods. The children, waking from their long dream, look around tiredly and head for home.” Millhauser’s piper is mostly the magical allure of a summer night made manifest; Summer Night Itself given a body and a sound. It’s the season that invites: the particular season of life, and the warm, kind season of the year; the moon, the darkness, the fire in the blood, and the imagination it all works to unlock. And what better personification of such a night than a dancing Faun? (As I’ve said before, it was the cover that drew me straight to this book, and the cover with the jacket copy that compelled me to buy it. If anyone out there still hasn’t read it, its season is nearly here again: get it and read it some hot night this summer!)

I would say the Faun in Pan’s Labyrinth fits role #2, that of messenger and mentor in things magical. I wouldn’t quite go so far as to put him in the “helper” (#4) category, because at times he’s downright scary, and I’m not altogether sure he cares about Ofelia or necessarily wants her to succeed — he’s just there to deliver the messages. (Does anyone want to disagree? I realize it’s quite open to interpretation — but he certainly seems heartless and creeps me out in some of his scenes.) He’s there to tell Ofelia what she must and must not do in order to get back to her kingdom beneath the ground. (Maybe deep down he cares, because he does get angry at her when she messes up and almost blows it.) He’s the face and the voice of the magical kingdom deep within the Earth, a kingdom inaccessible to humankind.

For the darkest uses of Pan-like figures I know of, we turn to the Welsh author Arthur Machen (1863-1947). Machen first published a story called “The Great God Pan” in 1890, which he revised and extended into a novella in 1894. It’s readily available today, and for anyone who considers him/herself a serious fan of fantasy or horror fiction, it’s an essential book.

Machen’s Pan may fulfill roles #1 and 2, but for sure he is #3, the corruptor, a totally harmful influence encountered in idyllic woodland settings. I would go so far as to say we can pretty much equate Machen’s Pan with the devil. One character in the novella, delving into the secrets of the Pan-encounters, writes on his manuscript this Latin inscription:

ET DIABOLUS INCARNATE EST. ET HOMO FACTUS EST.

Machen assumes his readers will be able to figure that one out; he doesn’t provide a translation, but I’m pretty sure it means “And the devil is incarnate. And he is made a man.” (Help me out, anyone who really knows Latin! Is that facere, “to do; to make,” or should we be thinking “true; fact”? Either way, we get Machen’s point.)

Encountering the devil in the woods: what early American writer does that make you think of? Hawthorne, right? Beyond the village lies the dark, fathomless woods, which is the abode of witches and the devil.

Pan in The Great God Pan is made all the more horrible by how subtly Machen handles things. We never see Pan in immediate narrative; in fact, a theme of the book is how the human mind cannot handle seeing “the great god Pan” directly. (And in that aspect, one can certainly trace the enormous influence Machen had on H.P. Lovecraft! Doesn’t that sound like vintage Lovecraft? The evil is so horrible that, if you see it, your mind is shattered, and you become a raving lunatic.) In Machen’s book, we glimpse Pan only through suggestions and secondhand accounts — and in a grotesque, ancient carving excavated from the wall of a house that sends a boy (who has earlier encountered a strange man in the woods) into paroxysms of fear. [“The head is pronounced by the most experienced archaeologists of the district to be that of a faun or satyr. [Dr. Phillips tells me that he has seen the head in question, and assures me that he has never received such a vivid presentment of intense evil.]”] Crossing paths with Machen’s Pan leads to madness, obsession, and death. Nor does Machen hesitate to plunge into the sexual associations of Pan-lore. I don’t want to give away the plot to any interested in reading it, so I guess I’ll stop there with my references to this book.

But I have to point you to one more Arthur Machen story, “The White People,” also regarded as one of his greatest works. This tale, rife with all sorts of imagery that was scandalous at the time, alludes to some sort of horrible stone carving, deep in the forest, a secret of secrets that the main character feels she dare not talk about. It’s worshiped by witches and has an extremely malevolent influence. Typical of Machen, we never find out exactly what the carving depicts, except that it’s likely “of Roman origin.” I’ll bet I’m not alone in my certainty that the image is a figure with the face of a man and the horns, ears, and lower body of a goat. It may indeed have been the same figure Machen had in mind when he described the monument stone at the end of The Great God Pan — which bears the words:

DEVOMNODENTI / FLAVIVSSENILISPOSSVIT / PROPTERNVPTIAS / QUASVIDITSVBVMRA

(I’m actually wondering if that’s a misprint in the book; I’d like to add a “B” three letters from the end and make it “SVBVMBRA” — “sub umbra.” Anyone? Help?)

Anyway, he does provide the translation this time: “To the great god Nodens (the god of the Great Deep or Abyss) Flavius Senilis has erected this pillar on account of the marriage which he saw beneath the shade.”

Now let’s move on to role #4 and fill our lungs with fresh air. Narnia! Faithfulness and friendship! The Faun Tumnus is a definite type 4, the helper. So is Mr. Girandole in The Sacred Woods. Like Tolkien’s Elves, like Mr. Spock the Vulcan, like some instances of the new face of the vampire in popular culture, benevolent Mr. Girandole represents a solid ally who is a little better than we are in nearly every way — stronger, wiser, older, more capable — and yet vulnerable and all too human in some surprising ways. Unlike type #1, which tantalizes us with unfulfilled — or only momentarily fulfilled — longing; and unlike type #2, which is only an interface with Nature for us, the kindest Fauns usher us not to destruction like the #3’s, but to a better state.

Heh, heh! I realize I left Mr. Tumnus out in the cold and am not really talking about him at all — maybe some of you Narnia fans can help me out with him.

But that leads us to #5: Kenneth Grahame’s Faun-like figure in his mysterious and perplexing chapter “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.” It’s been noted by scholars that this chapter seems somehow incongruous with the rest of The Wind in the Willows — what’s it doing here? And yet what I hear again and again from people who have read the book is, “That’s my favorite chapter.” Here, an unquestionably Faun-like presence is called “the Friend and Helper.” Without doubt, the presence is referred to in terms of holy awe: “Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror — indeed, he felt wonderfully at peace and happy . . . some august Presence was very, very near.” The characters see the baby otter sleeping in peace and contentment between the hooves of the Piper, and then: “‘Afraid?’ murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. ‘Afraid! Of Him? O, never, never! And yet — and yet — O, Mole, I am afraid!'” (Like Aslan this Piper is: not safe, but Good.)

Ooh! Ooh! Something just now occurred to me! Look at the Kenneth Grahame quote! I would bet money that it’s no accident Grahame wrote “It was no panic terror.” Are you aware of the fact that our English word “panic” comes from — yes, you guessed it — the name of Pan? My Webster’s dictionary says of “panic” that it’s from the Greek panikos, literally “of Pan”: “of, relating to, or resembling the mental or emotional state believed induced by the god Pan.” What Arthur Machen creates in The Great God Pan could hardly be any more authentic or true to the ancient Greek concept!

So what is the appeal? Why do these figures haunt and inform our literature? Well, here are my theories: at their worst, they give an embodiment to terrible forces beyond our control — the Unknown, the Evil, the destroying impersonal onslaught of Nature. And they provide a not-quite-human face for the worst elements in us ourselves. Lust and debauchery . . . in this way, I think there may be some connection between Satyr myths and werewolf legends. Jekyll and Hyde. “We have met the enemy and they is us.” They give a face to the Forest, to its mystery and allure — and in this way, they may be related to the figure of the Green Man. At their most benevolent, they represent that holy awe we feel when experiencing Creation as God made it: the green spaces where we can practically hear Him breathing . . . where we are afraid, and yet not afraid . . . not of the Piper at the gates of dawn.